High-performance Production Technology Developed for Single-walled CNTs

Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and Meijo Nano Carbon Co Ltd announced Dec 24, 2013, that they have developed an industrial manufacturing plant based on the "eDIPS (enhanced direct injection pyrolytic synthesis) method," a manufacturing technology that AIST developed for single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs).

The new plant has a 100 times higher productivity than a conventional manufacturing process based on Meijo Nano Carbon's arc discharge method. The company plans to start to ship samples of single-walled CNTs manufactured at the new plant in 2014.

The eDIPS method is a catalyst/gas catalytic reaction method developed by improving the gas phase fluidization method (a kind of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method). It enables to produce high-quality single-walled CNTs having small amounts of impurities.

With the latest mass production technology, AIST and Meijo Nano Carbon confirmed a crystallinity (G/D ratio) 5-10 times higher than those of commercially available conventional single-walled CNTs and a purity of 99% or higher. The diameter of the CNT is about 2nm, which is relatively thin.